Touch of the Demon by Christina Phillips

Prologue
     
    Rafe sprawled
across the black leather chair, one foot propped against the edge
of the natural stone coffee table. He eyed the other occupant of
the opulent library in disbelief. “You’ve got to be joking.”
    Mammon extended
his magnificent indigo wings. A clear insult, even after all this
time, but Rafe refused to rise to the challenge. After all, it had
been almost a century since Rafe had lost his wings in an
ill-advised wager with one of the Sirens. And while the subsequent
fuck had been mind-blowing, it hardly compared with losing his
bloody wings.
    “The humans are
pissing me off.” Mammon undulated his wings, each feather
shimmering with its own iridescent glow. Rafe tightened his grip
around the Waterford crystal glass and resisted the urge to sling
the contents in Mammon’s perfectly sculpted face.
    It would be a
criminal waste of two hundred year-old whiskey.
    “So what else
is new?” He swallowed the priceless spirit and savored the way it
scorched his throat and heated his stomach. “Humans were created
with the sole intention of pissing us off.”
    Mammon paced
across the illegally acquired semi-sentient rug, then paused in
front of the custom built fireplace. “The fucking gods are pissing
me off as well.”
    Rafe shrugged
one shoulder. “Let the gods annihilate the humans. Who cares?” He
certainly didn’t. He despised the entire species with their petty
disputes and inability to see beyond their own personal greed.
    He contemplated
the angelically enhanced and preserved Rembrandt displayed above
the stone fireplace, and silently conceded that, occasionally,
humans did have their uses.
    Mammon finally
stopped pacing and folded his wings. Hands clasped behind his back,
he frowned down at Rafe. “Because, impossible as it should be, the
humans aren’t crumbling beneath the celestial gods.”
    “And sending me
back in time is going to fix that?” Rafe stood, strolled to the bar
usually concealed behind the timber paneled wall and poured another
generous shot of whiskey.
    Mammon’s eyes
narrowed. “Legion’s been approached to join forces with the gods.
We’ve been given an ultimatum. Join with the other immortals or be
considered in league with the humans.”
    Rafe choked on
his whiskey. “They’ve got a nerve.” Generally, the gods liked to
think they were the only beings of any importance when it came to
the hierarchy of the immortals. Unless they wanted a special
assignment undertaken—a black ops mission. Then they were only too
happy to enlist the services of Legion.
    “A nerve ,” Mammon said, as if the word was acid in his throat,
“isn’t what I’d call their fucking hypocritical arrogance.”
    “We can’t be
the only ones they’re trying to blackmail. Who else have they
approached?”
    The tips of
Mammon’s wing feathers bristled as if offended. “I don’t give a
shit who else they’ve approached. No being gives me an
ultimatum and gets away with it.”
    Finally
intrigued by the situation, Rafe returned his glass to the bar.
“Why are they so eager for our help now? This power struggle
between them and the humans has raged for centuries. What’s
changed?”
    Mammon’s lip
curled. “Because it’s finally occurred to them, in all their
celestial omnipotence, that victory won’t necessarily be
theirs.”
    Rafe digested
that fact and found it bitter. He wasn’t a great fan of any of the
gods inhabiting the cosmos, but none of them irritated him to the
degree the self-styled Great Earth Mother did. Not only did she
possess a suffocating geocentric arrogance, but also an
unfathomable affection for the human race.
    His ego still
hadn’t recovered from when she’d laughed in his face when he’d
attempted to reason with her over his missing wings. The Sirens
were, after all, of her Earth. She did wield power over them.
    And she had
chosen not to. “Which means the elemental power of Earth wins.”
    “And we don’t
want that, do we, Rafe?” Mammon